Dida has formalised a multi-year agreement with Tsinghua x‑lab, the innovation and entrepreneurship platform at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The signing brought together Professor He Ping, vice dean of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, and Daryl Lee, group chief executive of Dida Holdings. The deal shifts previous ad‑hoc exchanges into an ecosystem‑level integration, aiming to bring academic research closer to the operational needs of travel players. The partners say the objective is to speed up the development and scaling of solutions, many of them powered by artificial intelligence, with the signing in Beijing attended by more than 80 international hotel partners.
The framework rests on three pillars: research and development in travel technology; incubation to accelerate industry–university projects from concept to market‑ready solutions; and talent development to align young professionals’ skills with industry demand. The partners want to combine Tsinghua’s academic strengths with Dida’s global distribution infrastructure. The group also announces a new edition of the Global Travel Technology Innovation Competition set to take place in Europe later this year, designed to surface ideas from young talent worldwide and support the international expansion of Chinese innovation.